School of Art, Media and Design, UWE Bristol:
3rd November 2003 - 7th December 2003
John Dilnot Books
Producing books, prints and other printed matter has been the dominant and lasting activity in my practice since leaving art school almost 20 years ago.
My interest is in nature and landscape and our modern relationship with it. How we perceive it and re-invent our perception of it. And how we physically alter and manipulate it.
Books are often formed from collections of found material. The accumulated imagery could be for example my own photographs (as in the Urban Tree series) or it could be food packaging imagery (as in English Homes and 15 Cows).
Amongst recent work is an ongoing series titled 'Urban Trees'. These books are being compiled from a growing collection of photographs of 'urban trees' I started taking in the early 1980's.
These books are being arranged in themes, for example 'Boundaries' features photographs of trees which are either reacting in some way to a fence or wall (by destroying it, growing around it or through it) or the boundary may be reacting to the tree, (for example double yellow lines steering to avoid curb side trees).
Others in this series are 'Space', 'Communication', 'Attachments', 'Spanish Urban Trees' and 'January' which consists of discarded Christmas trees found in the streets of Brighton during January 1999.
Books are printed using any available method that seems appropriate, including screen-printing, stencils, rubber stamps, letterpress, photocopy, inkjet.
I am currently working on a modest volume entitled Retrospective to commemorate 20 years of book works. Despite the big word it will be a characteristically small book with a double page dedicated to every book I have ever published. There will be a description, a photographic image of each book and a facsimile page from each book.
John Dilnot
John Dilnot
John Dilnot’s art is the expression of an intensely urban and industrial society, obsessed by its agrarian past. For better or for worse, this is a characteristic that has informed our culture for the last 150 years. From the perspective of great industrial cities, the rural idyll has always provided a form of mental escapism. Memories of past agricultural squalor, hardship and poverty have been suppressed in favour of the classic archetype of England, as pastoral Never Never Land. Through the period of the 20th century imperial and economic decline this sense of a retreat into a fantasy as a panacea for contemporary reality has become ever more pronounced. John Dilnot’s work captures this spirit with poignant and often searing accuracy.
It would be quite wrong, however, to locate John Dilnot within the English Romantic tradition. He is essentially an urbanist. He is an artist of the ‘out of town’ supermarket, the claustrophobic housing estate, the urban fringe. It is within these environments that the rural mirage is at its most seductive – and it’s most insidious. It creeps into wallpaper, domestic ornament, mass packaging.
Dilnot’s art takes it’s cue from the central irony that for many people, their daily encounter with the ‘natural’ may be through the medium of industrial mass- production, through consumerism and marketing. His work has the capacity to be as seductive as the products that are behind their inspiration. But the viewer is lulled into a false sense of security. Colours clash and disturb, repeated images are obsessive, nervous to the point of hysteria. A darkness seems to lurk in the woods, beyond the hill, behind the cottage door. In this artist’s world, rural dreams are disrupted and have a habit of turning into urban nightmares.
Chris Lethbridge
For more information on this, or any of the Artists Book Events at CFPR, please contact:
Research Associate for Artists' Books
Centre for Fine Print Research UWE, Bristol
Faculty of Art, Media and Design
Kennel Lodge Road
Bristol
BS3 2JT
UK
Tel: +44 (0)117 344 4747
Fax: +44 (0)117 344 4824
Sarah.Bodman@uwe.ac.uk
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